Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings
"Before the discovery of quarks, we hadn't imagined anything smaller than protons and neutrons. Are quarks the end of the line, the smallest imaginable objects in nature. Can the universe be divided into infinitely smaller units in the same way the universe is ever-expanding. Alan Lightman explores these questions in his characteristic accessible and lyrical prose, considering the igniting element behind consciousness, the origin of life, the anatomy of a smile, our fickle memories.
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$25.00
Book Information
| Publisher: | Pantheon Books |
|---|---|
| Publish Date: | 02/09/2021 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| ISBN-13: | 9781524749019 |
| ISBN-10: | 152474901X |
| Language: | English |
Full Description
The acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way" (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities--and impossibilities--of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called "the poet laureate of science writers," explores these questions and more--from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.
